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Introduction: From digital to digitally driven journal development

With Open Access publishing fees outpacing inflation in recent years — a trend that could lead to OA costing the academy more than subscriptions if left unchecked — there’s never been a greater need for mission-driven publishers to introduce sustainable OA journals. And there’s never been a better time for scholarly organizations of any size to publish OA, with more possible funding models and affordable online hosting options than ever before. But that doesn’t mean it’s not without its challenges. The research landscape is changing fast — from shifts in how readers find and engage with content to new archiving and indexing requirements. It’s a lot to keep up with, especially for smaller-sized publishers!

Are you and your team trying to figure out how to stay on top of the latest standards and trends — short of cloning yourselves?

One of the best places to start is identifying and leveraging opportunities to become a digitally driven publisher. And by that, we mean more than making articles available online. Being digitally driven is about harnessing the full workflow automation and content optimization potential of the modern web to publish more efficiently and adopting principles of Agile project management where applicable to become more readily adaptive to change.

This guide covers Agile project management practices and digitally driven content hosting, production, and dissemination strategies that scholarly organizations of any size can implement to take their journal program to the next level sustainably. You’ll learn how to:

• Optimize your journal website for online readers and search engines
• Expand your article indexing and meet the latest metadata recommendations • Adopt a digital-first production process to publish more efficiently
• Establish policies for content and data archiving and stick to them

Throughout this guide, we’ve included specific examples and “Quick Tip” boxes with links to relevant resources, as well as this “Digital OA Journal Publishing Professionalization Checklist” to help you bring everything together. Use the checklist to determine where you stand in the spectrum of digital-first publishing best practices and what steps to take next.

We’ve designed this guide to make it easy to jump between sections — so feel free to start with whatever is most relevant to you and your current publishing program stage. Now, without further ado — let’s get to it!